28,000 without power in BR area

• By SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Dec 11, 2008 - UPDATED: 3:10 p.m.

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Snow this morning is blamed for power outages to about 28,000 houses and businesses scattered around the Baton Rouge area, Entergy and DEMCO officials said.

Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana reported at about 12:30 p.m. that they had a combined total of about 65,000 customers without power in the parishes affected by this morning’s snow storm.

That includes about 17,000 customers in the Baton Rouge area.

Nearly 76,000 Entergy customers statewide were without power at the peak of the storm, according to an Entergy news release.

DEMCO had about 32,000 customers in seven parishes without power — including 11,000 in the Baton Rouge area, said David Latona, manager of Member and Public Relations for DEMCO.

“The snow accumulated on the trees causing the limbs to become heavy and break,” said Richard Holeman, regional manager for Entergy. “Some have fallen onto our equipment causing the power outages.”

Outages were scattered around Baton Rouge and workers were headed out to repair the lines, he said.

Entergy called in additional contractors and company crews from across the state to help with the restoration efforts.

“If the temperatures rise during the day and everything melts, that will be good. I don’t anticipate any extended outages,” Holeman said.

While Entergy crews are expected to restore power to the Baton Rouge area today, customers in Hammond and Amite may have to wait until tomorrow, Entergy officials stated in the news release.

DEMCO also was working to restore power to its customers.

“We’re working with every crew member we have plus we’ve called in help from other co-ops from around the state as well as from out of state,” Latona said. “We’ve also called in local contractors.”

Latona said that he was “cautiously optimistic” that warmer weather would benefit crew members repairing the lines.